A Q&A with Lloyd Blankfein, Author of Streetwise
From the long-tenured head of an institution legendary for its culture of success, a candid memoir of global leadership in an age of extreme turbulence.
Chances are, if you're reading this, you're not the former chairman and CEO of one of the world's largest multinational investment banks. (If you are, Hi, Lloyd.) But the magic of books is, that if the former chairman and CEO of one of the world's largest multinational investment banks writes a book, you get to take as good a glimpse as you possibly can (outside of being their therapist) at how they think, to peak over their shoulder as they manage a crisis of international significance, and learn the story of how they ended up in a position in which the decisions they make have such a significant impact on so many other lives.
In addition to offering us that look in his new memoir, Streetwise, Lloyd Blankfein recently took time out of his busy book launch schedule to answer seven questions from Porchlight. As a bookseller, we stick to questions about his book (and others) here, but we encourage you to look up some of his recent media appearances for his take on the current state of the economy.
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Porchlight Book Company: Writing a book is no small undertaking. What compelled you to write this one?
Lloyd Blankfein: I didn’t start out to write a book. I decided to write a personal history for my kids, who I didn’t spend enough time with as they were growing up because of my commitment to work and travel. The exercise was very cathartic. As I showed it to friends and colleagues, they reminded me of more experiences and insights about my rise and tenure, eventually leading a firm with extraordinary talents and influence, coping with and managing through extraordinary events in financial history. There is a ton of extant writing about the period, most of it inconsistent. I thought I could tell the story coherently from an insider’s perspective, with humor, while conveying the critical importance of Goldman’s culture, and how it has been created and sustained through calm and through storms. I feel it makes a great contribution to the historical record, and through storytelling, provides a primer for managing talent and risk.
PBC: Writing (and reading) always prompts as many new questions as it offers answers to the ones you came to it with. What is one unanswered question you encountered as you wrote the book that you are most interested in answering now?
LB: Are we fated to cycle through crises, or can we learn and apply enough from the past to avoid or mitigate the extremes.
PBC: If there is only one thing a reader takes away from reading this book, what would you hope it to be?
LB: That individuals and institutional culture make a great difference to outcomes.
PBC: One of the great things about books is that they tend to lead readers to other books. What book[s] related to this topic would you recommend people read after (or perhaps even before) reading your book?
LB: Read any or all of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire annual letters.
PBC: What is your favorite book?
LB: I enjoyed re-reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro. The difficult but super-effective builder Robert Moses should not be anyone’s complete role model. But when I first read the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, I was very focused on the subject’s flawed character and the mistakes he made in his program for expanding NYC’s infrastructure. But re-reading the book after my long career of trying to get things done, I was more taken by the magnitude of his achievements, as opposed to the damage left in the wake of pursuing those achievements, and I became a qualified admirer. Obviously nothing had changed in the book; rather I had been changed by my own experiences.
PBC: What are you reading now?
LB: The second volume of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy on the American Revolution, The Fate of the Day.
PBC: Do you have any future projects in the works that we can look forward to?
LB: Finding another act that warrants a second memoir.
About the Author
Lloyd Blankfein was chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2018.
